A hospital in Boston is set to offer “preferential care based on race” and “race-explicit interventions” as a part of its new “antiracist agenda for medicine.”
Brigham and Women’s Hospital will implement the program, outlined in a Boston Review article titled “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine,” later this spring. Harvard Medical School instructors Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse wrote that the program uses a “reparations framework” for allocating medical resources in order to “comprehensively confront structural racism.”
“Together with a coalition of fellow practitioners and hospital leaders, we have developed what we hope will be a replicable pilot program for direct redress of many racial health care inequities,” Wispelwey and Morse wrote, noting that their program is in part based on Critical Race Theory.
The authors discussed examples of “racial inequity” in hospitals, including a lack of workplace diversity and treatment for sick cell disease, while proposing concrete, albeit discriminatory solutions. These included “cash transfers and discounted or free care” for only blacks and Latinos.
This racially discriminatory program would be illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity,” the law states. Wispelwey and Morse acknowledged that the program would “elicit legal challenges,” but encouraged other institutions to follow their lead.
“Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law … We encourage other institutions to proceed confidently on behalf of equity and racial justice, with backing provided by recent White House executive orders,” they wrote, referencing President Joe Biden’s multiple executive orders addressing racial ‘equity.’
The Daily Caller reached out to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for comment but did not receive a response.
*story by The Daily Caller
